Dara Ó Briain talks about his stand-up tour and quiz show, and pays tribute to Barry Cryer

Virgin Radio

28 Jan 2022, 13:51

Comedian and presenter Dara Ó Briain joined the Chris Evans Breakfast Show with Sky to talk about his upcoming stand-up tour, and hosting Channel 4’s newest quiz show. He also paid tribute to comedian and writer Barry Cryer, who passed away this week.

Dara’s new stand-up tour, So… Where Were We?, runs from March through to December. The Irish comedian told Chris that he performed some shows last summer in preparation for the tour, and did so with a walking stick, after recovering from knee surgery. Explaining that he might now have to change the opening to the show, as he no longer uses the stick, he said: “I had a whole bit ready about the stick that I was on, and now I don’t need the stick anymore. And now I genuinely have a dilemma, going, ‘Am I going to just bring the stick, and pretend?’ It’s a great opening joke. Like, it’s a really good opening five minutes about being on a walking stick!”

In October 2021, Dara won an award at Maths Week Ireland for raising public awareness of maths. He studied mathematics and theoretical physics in Dublin before his career in comedy. When Chris asked whether his typical audiences were as clever as he is, and what his type of humour is like, Dara responded that somebody had tweeted him saying his wife would go and see the tour, “as long as he’s not doing any of that maths!” 

The comedian confirmed that his new show will, in fact, be his usual mix of stories, one-liners, and audience-messing. He said he tends towards "silly" and "nonsense", adding: “You can’t seem like the alpha alpha. You have to be pulling the rug from underneath yourself.” 

As well as taking on a massive tour, Dara will also host Channel 4’s newest quiz show this Spring. Called One & Six Zeros, it will see contestants compete to win £1,000,000, with zeros being knocked off the total when questions are answered incorrectly. Speaking about the new show, its host said: “It’s a quiz show with a potentially huge prize. One and six zeros. And so you build it up by answering a certain number of questions. There are only about seven questions in it, because it’s one of these shows, a bit like The Million Pound Drop, it’s more about watching the tension, how it warps and changes, how people discuss it among themselves and what they do. So it’s all about the casting, and we found these really lovely groups of friends, or family, or relations, or work colleagues.”

He continued: “It’s all about the people doing it, more so than one of these ones where it’s like, ‘Here’s 60 questions in a row, and how well will you do?’. It’s like, ‘Here’s a question with seven answers, let’s see you go through the process as you all talk it out’. So, the fun is in that. Much like The Million Pound Drop is really about them arguing, and them going, ‘We’ll put this onto that', and watching it go down as much as go up. So it’s that. 

“There’s some moments where it gets very tense.”

During his conversation with Chris, Dara paid tribute to comedian and writer Barry Cryer, who died this week at the age of 86. “He liked the next generation. He was really interested, and knew who was coming up… really supportive of them. I remember him coming up and saying, ‘Oh I remember I saw you on tour with Emo Philips in 2002,’ because he went to things," he said.

“And then he went up to the [Edinburgh] Fringe for years. He had an 80th birthday thing up at the Fringe, and it was packed with young comics, because he kept an interest.

“He was a sweetheart of a man.”

Dara and Chris also chatted about a host of other topics, including time-travel, astronomy, and dreams. You can listen to the whole 35-minute interview here. 

For tickets to Dara’s tour, So… Where Were We?, visit daraobriain.com. One & Six Zeros is coming this Spring to Channel 4. 

For more great interviews listen to The Chris Evans Breakfast Show with Sky, weekdays from 6:30am on Virgin Radio, or catch up on-demand here.